OB Rag

By Kate Callen / June 3, 2025

San Diegans who feel the strain of overdevelopment in older neighborhoods won’t recognize the halcyon city in Wesley Morgan’s May 31 Times of San Diego commentary, “Opinion: Privileged Homeowners Like Me Shouldn’t Resist New Housing.”

Morgan, treasurer of YIMBY Democrats of San Diego, describes how he and his wife bought a Mission Hills home 11 years ago where they “raised our daughters surrounded by great schools, walkable streets, and reliable city services.”

Over time, Morgan writes, “it became painfully clear how few others had that chance and how little our neighborhoods were doing to welcome others.”

The rest is a story of virtue and evil. Virtuous people like Morgan want to see a lot of new housing bring a lot of new residents into their flourishing communities. Evil people want to keep new residents out because they are mean and they hate strangers.

Morgan’s essay reads like a fairy tale because it is. Let’s look closely at some of his assertions and see how they square with reality.

By Geoff Hueter / June 4, 2025

San Diego’s Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU) program has been successful in enabling greater housing density within single-family and multi-family zones. However, the Bonus ADU program in single-family zoned neighborhoods, which allows an unlimited number of ADUs on parcels designated within the Sustainable Development Area, has had a profound negative impact on neighborhoods, with predictable community backlash.

In response, the City Council on March 4 asked the Planning Department to present revisions to the program to address the over-sized scale of some projects in single-family zones. The Planning Department’s proposals have been reactive and convoluted, in no small part because the Planning Department has not provided a comprehensive public input and review process.

A real revision of the Bonus ADU program would start with a foundational question — what role do we want single-family neighborhoods to play in providing new options for infill housing?

Proponents of the Bonus ADU program reflexively cite that we have a housing crisis that justifies building any kind of housing anywhere in San Diego. However, San Diego’s affordable housing needs are more nuanced than that. San Diego’s focus on total units rather than type of units means that San Diego struggles to provide family-sized housing.

By Ben Christopher / CalMatters / June 4, 2025

The northern tip of the Vermont Square neighborhood in South Los Angeles gentrified in many of the usual ways over the last decade.

Median incomes shot up. The neighborhood’s share of Black residents declined. On the list of fastest growing home prices across the region, Vermont Square cracked the top ten. Along Western Avenue, new apartment buildings popped up as visible markers of change.

But there is a less obvious, if no less profound, marker: Fewer people began riding the bus.

Between 2012 and 2017, public transit ridership fell in this Census designated tract — a roughly half-square mile neighborhood spanning Western — by 24%. In that same period, the neighborhood-wide rent increased by an average of $468 per month.

That, according to UCLA researchers, is probably not a coincidence. A study published late last year compared changes in transit ridership numbers to rental market trends in neighborhoods across Los Angeles and Orange counties. It found that in neighborhoods well-served by buses and trains, transit ridership tended to fall in places where the rents were rising.

By Frank Laughton / June 3, 2025

First, a true confession, I am not a financial wizard, and I have never run for or held a public office. I’m just a lowly taxpayer, and recent decisions from our political leaders make me feel even more lowly.

I was a firm supporter of the strong mayor concept in 2004, when the passage of Proposition F eliminated the city manager form of government on a trial basis, and again in 2010, when the passage of Proposition D made the new arrangement permanent. I believed at the time that the Mayor needed to have the flexibility to carry out his or her agenda.

But the past several years have delivered a strong wake-up call. Everywhere I look, I see hard evidence that the Mayor and the City Council do not have the competence to run the affairs of the city.

Let’s start with fiscal mismanagement. I’m a former long-distance biker who is all for safety. But how can the City justify spending $90 million on 26 miles of bike lanes that are hardly used? There was no cost-benefit analysis done (that I know of). When the Mayor was asked for a justification of the large expenditure, his answer was “safety.” Where was the data to support that position?

By JW August / June 3, 2025

San Diego Congressional and local elected officials stood together Monday to denounce last weekend’s armed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raid on a South Park neighborhood restaurant.

Four U.S. representatives and two mayors vowed to challenge the Trump Administration’s militaristic tactics in storming the popular Buona Forchetta eatery on Friday and intimidating the South Park community. An estimated 20 to 25 ICE agents handcuffed the entire staff while looking for 19 employees named in a warrant signed by local magistrate Judge Karen Crawford. Four employees with no identification were taken into custody.

“Over the past week, the immigration enforcement tactics we’ve seen in San Diego have crossed a new line,” said Rep. Sara Jacobs. “This isn’t about going after criminals. They’re going after people who are trying to do the right thing and people who are contributing to our economy.”

Jacobs was joined at the press conference outside the James M. Carter and Judith N. Keep Federal Courthouse by Reps. Juan Vargas, Mike Levin, and Scott Peters and by San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria and Imperial Beach Mayor Paloma Aguirre.

Dear Rag Readers:

I just got off the phone with Editordude Frank Gormlie. He certainly didn’t sound like a man who just underwent successful bypass surgery. Frank’s voice was clear, and his mood was mellow. But knowing Frank, that mood is transitory: The morning after his surgery, he was irked because the hospital was late in bringing him breakfast. It was an early and sure sign that he’s well on the road to recovery.

From San Diego Union-Tribune & City News Service / June 2, 2025

San Diego police officers fatally shot an allegedly suicidal man armed with a knife in Ocean Beach on Saturday after he crashed a car into another vehicle while being pursued by officers.

The incident began when a police officer was sent to check the welfare of a man standing in the middle of Coronado Avenue who was blocking traffic around 9:15 a.m.. The man, who was making suicidal statements, got into a car and drove off as other officers were called to assist, authorities said.

The man led officers on a short chase on surface streets before crashing into a Jeep blocking the intersection at Ebers Street and Bermuda Avenue, sheriff’s Lt. Juan Marquez said in a statement.

By Lisa Mortensen / June 2, 2012

Remember the days when being a voter and a community member gave you access to City Hall free of charge? Judging from the invitation to the Building Industry Association of San Diego’s June 4 “Beers with the Chiefs” event at a Bay Park brewery, that access now costs $120.

Councilmembers Sean Elo-Rivera (District 9) and Kent Lee (District 6) have both spoken out as champions for equity in their districts. So it was a surprise to see Elo-Rivera Chief of Staff Molly Weber and Lee Chief of Staff Sara Kamiab serving as co-hosts of this pay-to-play PAC event.

Meanwhile, taxpayers are losing municipal services, library access, and recreation hours of operation. Balboa Park visitors will now be charged for parking. Public restrooms will be closed, and beach fire rings are being taken away. If ordinary San Diegans paid $120 at the door of City Hall, would we get more than one minute of speaking time at public meetings?

By Neighbors for a Better San Diego / June 2, 2025

While Neighbors For A Better San Diego has been focusing on San Diego’s revisions to the Bonus ADU program, a bill is moving through the California State Senate — Senate Bill 79 (SB 79) — that could radically change for the worse single-family neighborhoods across the state, including right here in San Diego.

SB 79 would allow housing developments up to 6 stories tall (65 feet or more) in single-family zoned neighborhoods within a half-mile of bus rapid transit (BRT) or trolley lines — all under the pretense of climate action and transit accessibility. This could include transit stops that are planned but may never be built.

Neighbors For A Better San Diego strongly opposes SB 79.  Our objections are detailed in our white paper.

While some of our objections arise from the specific conditions of San Diego, others apply to all California cities:

By Kate Callen / May 29, 2025

San Diegans have just 10 days to submit written protests to the City Clerk about proposed trash fees for residential properties.

For the price of a postage stamp, property owners can register their disgust with one of the most offensive City Hall scams in recent memory. If voters had known the truth in 2022 – that new trash collection services would cost $53 a month – Proposition B would have been defeated.

Instead, it narrowly passed, thanks to a much lower estimate of $23 to $29 a month from the City’s Independent Budget Analyst (IBA). In a May 5 Union-Tribune article headlined “San Diego Trash Fee Collection Was Riddled With Errors,” the IBA said its faulty work was “an honest mistake based on some bad information and some miscalculations.”

Jordan More, the IBA analyst responsible for the miscalculation, had this to say: “Mea culpa – I am human.” He is also well compensated. According to Transparent California, the City paid More $248,117.68 in total pay and benefits in 2023.

By Chuck Dunning / May 30, 2025
In his Gettysburg Address, Abraham Lincoln called this country “a new nation conceived in liberty” guaranteed by the First Amendment of the Constitution: “Congress shall make no law …abridging the freedom of speech, or the press.”

In the 1920s, with the advent of radio and later television, Congress realized the enormous potential in these media for the public good. It deemed the airways as belonging to the public. For the right to use them, license holders would be required to operate in the “public interest, convenience and necessity.”

In 1949, the Federal Communications Commission went a step further and passed what became known as The Fairness Doctrine, requiring radio and television stations to devote airtime to issues of public importance and to present opposing perspectives. But in 1987, the Reagan administration, believing the growth of cable TV and the Internet would guarantee multiple points of view, repealed the Fairness Doctrine.

Today, that guarantee of freedom of the press is under assault like never before.

The Conrad Prebys Foundation / May 29, 2025

As federal funding for medical and life sciences research faces deep and destabilizing cuts, Prebys Foundation is stepping in with a rapid response package totaling $7 million to defend San Diego’s biomedical research sector?—?one of the world’s leading innovation hubs.

Federal grants have historically provided nearly half of all medical research funding in the United States. This support has enabled transformative advances in drug discovery, fueled job growth, and secured America’s position as a global leader in the life sciences.

In San Diego, the impact has been profound, home to internationally renowned research institutes, universities, and biotech startups that together make up a biomedical ecosystem unlike any other in the country.

Executive orders and steep reductions in federal research investment are threatening critical local initiatives, halting active projects, and forcing early- and mid-career scientists to look abroad or leave the field altogether. Without swift and targeted action, the region risks an exodus of talent and a slowdown in the medical breakthroughs that improve lives and drive the economy.